Two Masterminds Academia and Industry Team up to Change the Way Impact
Products are Designedby Tara Taffera

What if it was possible to calculate the exact windspeeds
that occurred during Hurricane Katrina, take that info back to a lab,
and apply those storm conditions to your products to see how they perform?
This isn’t an ASTM test that would replay hurricane speeds for a specified
time. This is a “real storm,” that can replicate a hurricane (or tornado)
in its entirety in both duration and strength—a test that could introduce
real-world conditions including installation errors and manufacturer defects.
What if someone else paid for the bulk of the research—to the tune of
$4 million in fact?

This is exactly the scenario playing out at the University
of Florida with the help of one Michigan entrance product manufacturer.
Forrest Masters, associate professor of civil and coastal engineering,
gets dozens of requests per year to perform research—most of which he
turns away. So what made Henry Upjohn, CEO at Special-Lite Inc., based
in Decatur, Mich., stand out when he approached Masters approximately
four years ago? To hear Masters tell it, it was Upjohn’s brilliant engineering
mind (For more on Upjohn, see page 92).

Brilliant mind aside, the fact that Upjohn was willing to
foot three quarters of the projected $4 million dollar bill, was also
enticing. And he’s not keeping the research for himself. Building product
companies, including doors and windows, even his competitors, are welcome
to test their products at the university after Upjohn completes certain
phases of his work.

Simulating a Storm
Companies will, however, have to pay for use of this one-of-a-kind piece
of equipment, but, to some companies, the end result is priceless.

The hurricane simulator is 24 feet wide by 18 feet tall,
and can simulate 450 psf loads on vertical systems and 230-mph winds over
horizontal/sloped systems. It is powered by a 14-foot fan (for a video
tour go to usglassmag.com and click on the studio).

When the test is performed, as I learned first-hand, when
you close your eyes, you will hear a whooshing sound—it will feel like
a real hurricane taking place outside your doors. The test makers can
even measure strains, displacements, air leakage and the forces required
to hold the test subject in place.

“We build a computer model of what we are testing then we
tweak it to ensure that the computer gives us the same results as the
experiment,” says Masters. “Once we have a high degree of confidence in
the model, we can introduce design improvements or installation errors
to see how performance is affected. This approach obviates the need to
run lots of full-scale experimental tests, which are expensive and time-consuming
to set up.”

Masters, also a licensed structural engineer, teams up with
students at the university both inside the lab for computer modeling and
outside the lab to chase storms. Florida, with the highest number of hurricanes
taking place each year, makes it the ideal stomping ground for this innovation.
Masters is the ideal person to spearhead it.

“I love what I do and enjoy working on different problems
that most people don’t want to touch,” he says. “I am not scared of trying
new things. Ingenuity always wins.”

That, and a whole lot of science.

“When Henry first visited me he told me the science comes
first,” says Masters. “He insisted that we work at the leading edge—taking
risks and transforming the industry. Our concept is much bigger than the
scope of one company. It’s about American competiveness. It’s about producing
the best technology we can that is still economical.”

But the road to get here was not cheap.

“The research was expensive. Most people aren’t prepared
for that level of effort and cost,” says Masters. “It got a lot bigger
along the way. His [Upjohn’s] expectations for the final outcome grew.”

Were either of these two masterminds ever wary of their
path? Did they ever think about scaling back?

“I felt good about this from the beginning,” says Masters.
“Our team is knowledgeable and passionate and we think things through.
What made everything come together was Special-Lite. I knew this would
work. They are looking to be leaders in the field.”

An Unlikely PairHow did a researcher from Florida and a manufacturer from Michigan
meet and ultimately work together for weeks and months at a time over
the past four years?

This is just the type of thing that turns Upjohn’s inquisitive
and mechanical mind into overdrive.

“This insurance friend felt one of the issues was a result
of the current way hurricane doors and exterior building products are
evaluated,” says Upjohn. “If you are going to change the test procedures
what do you change them to? I had met Forrest through this friend and
he had said what we really needed was a way to evaluate products based
on a hurricane experience. The idea was to build a simulator in which
we could put large pieces of building products—even the side of a house—inside
and simulate a storm.”

The goal is to then have the industry build standards based
on this research.

“In an actual hurricane the wind is coming and going and
the pressure is changing,” explains Upjohn. “You can put a door in a mild
situation but if you test it, and have it shake for a few hours as it
would during a hurricane, then it will fail. The idea was to build something
that could evaluate products in these real-world conditions.”

Special-Lite has produced impact products sold in hurricane
zones for 10 years, and much of this is in school applications. The company
was looking to expand, as it was running out of growth potential in schools.
In 2012, it bought Universal Pultrusion, a manufacturer of fiberglass
doors and frames that opened up a new world of opportunities for Special-Lite.
This is one place where some of this data will be used to further develop
products.

Generating the DataBefore the next one gets built, there is plenty of work to
be done on this version—plenty of research.

“This will take a lot of playing back storms [in numerous
simulations] to get the research we want,” says Upjohn. “It will be interesting
to see what we will get out of it.”

He is more than anxious to get started, particularly in
testing some of the company’s new composite products.

“One of the nice things about composites is you can get
engineering properties you can’t get otherwise and you can get them for
less money. We have been working on different composite sections to understand
how they degrade and perform under different types of loading and we already
understood how you transfer those loads in our flush door,” says Upjohn.

He says the company will start taking many of Special-Lite’s
new designs and run them through the simulator to see the failure mechanisms.
Then we will build or enhance our FEA model to further refine our approach.

“Every once in a while something comes around and you think
it will fail in a certain way and it turns out differently,” says Upjohn.
“If you are going to make cost-competitive products you have to evaluate
different ways of doing things so you come up with the most efficient
use of the products. For us it will be a really good development tool.”

Upjohn set an official cut-off date where development of
the simulator stops and research begins—that was July 1. Again, Masters
and Upjohn are in alignment with respect to this issue as well. Masters
cautions companies that R & D efforts don’t have to go on indefinitely.
“You want to get to the end point and that’s the next generation product,”
he says.

“We are heavy planners—90 percent planning. Then we execute.
People are usually blindsided by how much research comes out in a quick
timeframe.”

Once this abundance of research is produced there are a
few things that both are in agreement will and will not happen.

“We think our findings will ultimately affect test labs,”
says Masters. “But that’s not our role, though we would be open to working
with them.”

Both agree that this research could influence upcoming building
codes. “There is nothing in the current regulations about maximum door
deflections,” for example, says Upjohn. “That will have to be in the codes
at some point.”